Optimistic glamour, logomania and colourful works of art: those are the fur pieces we will be wearing come spring next year. Referencing art and vintage silhouettes, designers looked to the past to create the present. Across the catwalks, furs managed to feel both comfortingly nostalgic and elegantly classic but also offer something truly new and exciting.
And where fur for spring/summer once meant a fox stole or a mink wrap, these days designers place full fur coats prominently at the front of their collections as lightness techniques evolve and the excitement around fur continues to build. Here, we spotlight the key fur looks that stood out on the runways.
Fendi
Fendi’s craftsmanship continues to set the fur bar high for the fashion industry. This season, Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld pieced dyed organza-backed mink into elegant and seemingly floating grids on coats. Giacomo Balla’s floral sculptures had inspired a mink intarsia dress that hung casually off the shoulders. The look that set Instagram on fire was Kendall Jenner in a logo intarsia mink bomber, a motif that also adorned a baseball jacket and coat. It brilliantly mimicked natural glow mink colours – a modern logomania nod to what is arguably the number one mink coat classic.
Marni
Francesco Risso – formerly at Prada – showed his second womenswear collection for Marni to rave reviews. The designer has injected a charming, fresh narrative into Marni’s awkward-chic house codes and his mink pieces were the embodiment of this new direction. Playing with oversize proportions and 1920s drop waists, he sent out the dressing gowns of our wildest and most eccentric daydreams. A granny-style housecoat in white mink had twee roses embroidered all over it, while a pink leather-lined version had been dyed with Dalmatian spots. From a hand-painted silk robe with a dyed mink lapel in sky blue to highlighter pink and jewel green full mink coats, there was plenty to fall in love with here.
Carolina Herrera
US Vogue chose Carolina Herrera’s white and yellow ice cream striped mink coat as the cover image for their review, and rightly so. The collarless piece perfectly summed up the clean, feminine and upbeat collection with a jolt of delectable energy. Elsewhere, Herrera used her signature silhouette – a roomy skirt with a nipped-in waist and a neat bodice – on a feminine dyed mink coat made up of contrasting stripes and discs.
Oscar de la Renta
Nicki Minaj sat front row wearing a black and white Oscar de la Renta fox hooded coat, and the runway was equally fur-focused. Designers Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia – who trained under Mr de la Renta – paid tribute to the late designer by stitching his signature into a white mink coat (another example of logo love for SS18) and through several fur pieces. There was a pop art-inspired mink coat worn over a bathing suit, and the duo chose ruby red and pink as their colours of choice for a dip-dye mink coat and a fox and mink coat slung casually over the shoulder.
Thom Browne
Thom Browne ventured into a trippy fairy tale universe with his fur-filled collection. Colour-blocked and bolster-shaped dyed mink tiles covered a plaid pastel organza jacket that resembled a soft Lego construction. He used dyed striped mink to give further texture to a 3D fan coat and suggestively placed a white mink anchor on a racy under-bust corset gown. The bride wore fur, too: a tulle cloud coat with soft white ink on the collar and a unicorn traced in gold across the front.